Starcevich stakes AFL future on Tigers, TV
Imposing big man Jackson Starcevich will play for Claremont this season in his bid to become a mature-age AFL recruit.
The son of Collingwood premiership player Craig Starce- vich, the 20-year-old has spent the past three years in NEAFL ranks in Brisbane.
But he has returned to Perth and will play for the Tigers, where he has several close friends from his days at Hale School.
The 198cm Starcevich hopes to attract the attention of AFL recruiters after being overlooked as a potential father-son selection at Collingwood, where his father played 124 matches before adding 20 at the Brisbane Bears.
Starcevich is also a candidate on Fox8 reality show The Recruit, which will offer an AFL rookie place to its winner.
The show will be filmed over the coming weeks and televised in the second half of the season.
The Tigers will have to play two clearance fees for Starcevich given his unusual background as a player registered with East Perth and NEAFL club Morningside.
He played several colts matches at East Perth, where his father made 37 appearances in the mid-1980s, but then moved back to Brisbane where he grew up.
Claremont must pay East Perth a transfer fee because Starcevich was registered under the WAFL's father-son rules, but also have to pay Morningside under the national transfer rules.
"We are working through the arrangements with both clubs and it looks as though both will come to the party," Claremont football manager Dean Horsing- ton said. "It is not ideal to have to pay two transfer fees but Jackson is an unusual case."
Starcevich played 41 matches for Morningside, as well as 10 for the Brisbane reserves and one for the Gold Coast reserves.
He will bolster a Claremont big-man department which includes veteran Mark Seaby, colts graduate Darcy Cameron and 29-year-old Jerramungup recruit Jayden Brooks, who has starred in the country for the past decade.
